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RADical thinking: Porn Reform

Submitted by Newfie on Thu, 2008-04-24 10:05

Much of my work has to do with adults with Reactive Attachment Disorder. This is a group of individuals strongly struggling with personal relationships and intimacy issues. "Letting someone in" is not at all easy when the pattern has always been "letting go", especially when the first-love relationship with a mother (specifically) has been altered by abuse, abandonment and relinquishment of parental responsibility. I know these issues very intimately, because I was the lucky bastard who got burnt by two sets of "loving parents" and a sexless spouse.

I find adults with RAD have an intense anxiety towards emotional closeness, and they typically fall into two categories: over-sexed and under-sexed. Obviously, no extreme is healthy, and re-training (through what I call "active re-parenting") seems to be the best form of behavior modification.

Given the profound abundance of porn and "free-sex", I was wondering what others thought about the idea of porn-reform? Would there be a market for sex-films that focus on the simplistics of intimate sharing and caring, versus the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am approach most production companies reproduce? Can the sex-industry become interested in creating films that focus on how slow-growth eroticism benefits a couple, (accepting that as the new-alternative life-style) versus the quick aggressive fix most of us have grown to accept within their scripts?
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about the porn industry. You can download it from Amazon for 2.99. It's really, really funny and informative. You will see that a porn company SPONSORS one of the chief organizations of sex educators in this country, ASSECT. The sponsors produce a few "educational" films and hundreds of porn films.

TRAILER: http://www.1726entertainment.com/ What's interesting is how the men in the study see things differently while using porn, and how their perception shifts back within weeks afterward. This is why I always suggest that people move beyond orgasm for a few weeks before they decide what they think about themselves and a lot of other things.

The porn industry stays in business by promoting addiction. This means promoting orgasm with the maximum amount of extremes, violence, domination, and shock value. The latter "lace" it like extra nicotine in cigarettes, because they raise the dopamine produced. (Dopamine is the "molecule of addiction).

This is why that industry would not be interested in what you propose. Healing means moving beyond compulsive behavior. Healed people would not even be their customers.

I've often thought about how one would visually portray what I've been learning about, that is, sex that heals. Since nudity is such a trigger for the primitive part of the male brain, I don't think it's possible to help someone trapped in compulsive behavior that way. Once a man is in balance again, he sees nudity quite differently, although he still finds it attractive.

Also, film is race-specific, something I don't like, as I think we're all in this together.

Perhaps healing through sex is a mystery we need to tap two-by-two, once we regain some basic control. Personally, I don't think any shortcuts work, until that first, uncomfortable, step is mastered.

I can't help but laugh that disgusted laugh I get when I keep seeing the pattern of perpetuating profits through misery -- all at the cost of a person's innocence.

Look what is happening with the adoption industry, child trafficking, child pornography and the pharmaceutical industry. Pills and quick-fixes versus humane solutions.

Nice.

I think what disturbs me more is the public's apathy regarding these re-connecting themes. Until there is a unified front against the offenses hurting families of all sizes, nothing good will sustain itself and thrive.

One of my biggest supporters has been trying to expose the corruptions behind child placement for 30 years. She works with incarcerated adoptees searching for their natural families. She wrote to me the other day, "Has all my work been a colosal waste?"

With attitudes like the one you just shared, I'm beginning to think the human-race is too far down the shitter to care anymore.

Jennifer Ordoñez
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 1:08 PM ET May 10, 2008
Christian dating web site BigChurch.com's motto is "Bringing people together in love and faith." A pointed quote from the Old Testament ("A man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Gen. 2:24) precedes the site's Bible-verse search library. Further testimonial from a fresh-faced woman leaves little doubt as to the site's higher purpose: "I feel like my prayers of finding a respectable man have been answered! Thanks BigChurch!!"

So it may surprise users that BigChurch.com has a decidedly promiscuous corporate parent: Penthouse Media Group Inc. At a time when ever-raunchier Internet porn has made such mainstream mags as Penthouse and Playboy seem like throwbacks to more innocent times, these well-established brands have been trying to diversify and reinvent themselves. "If you're looking for adult content today, there are so many more places and many other ways to do that," says David Miller, an industry analyst and managing director at Los Angeles-based Sanders Morris Harris Group. "You can get it over the Internet for free."

Of that, adult media companies are painfully aware. In its first-quarter earnings report last week, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. reported declining revenue in nearly every division and an overall loss of $3.1 million. Betting on steady revenue from casinos, clothing and other products branded with its ubiquitous bunny icon, rather than from its media holdings, the company in recent years has recast itself as a lifestyle business. "Traditional print is a heritage business for us, and an important part of the brand. But realistically it's not a business that we see growing," says company spokesperson Martha Lindeman. "Today we are really a brand-management company."

The corporate parent of Penthouse—Playboy's raunchier newsstand rival, founded in 1965 by Bob Guccione—is taking a different tack. Bankrupt and racked with debt, Penthouse was acquired in 2004 by a group of investors led by entrepreneur Marc Bell. Bell's agenda for revitalizing the company evolved significantly last December when Penthouse acquired social-network behemoth Various, Inc. for $500 million in cash and stock. Operating well under the media radar compared with other social-networking companies like Facebook and MySpace, Various, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., has a deceptively broad and profitable reach. Its subsidiaries now include a number of online dating sites—from BigChurch.com to Bondage.com—that have signed up a combined 250 million members since they were founded and 1.2 million current subscribers who pay for content. Its biggest, AdultFriendFinder.com—which bills itself as "the world's largest adult sex and swingers site"—is one of the most highly trafficked Web sites in the world with more than 18 million members, the company says. Bell says in the coming months Penthouse Media Group will be renamed FriendFinder Networks, Inc., and he plans to take the company public by the end of the year. The Penthouse brand will be a well-known but admittedly smaller arm of the company. "Penthouse is just another Web site. We are in the social-networking business. We are not in the business of Penthouse," Bell says.

The company's strategy is to use its technology platform—and its well-established network of 600,000 online affiliates that link to its sites—to support a potentially unlimited number of sites catering to daters, friend seekers and adult-content consumers around the world. Dateless in Beijing? Try ChineseFriendFinder.com. Single and interested in a threesome in Omaha? AdultFriendFinder.com has plenty of couples looking for you, many of whom have uploaded erotic pictures of themselves.

So where does Penthouse fit in? Its name recognition can help cut through the Internet clutter. "Penthouse is a worldwide trademark and we see opportunity in combining our brands," Bell says. BigChurch.com, meet LikeMyNudePhoto .com. Opposites, it is said, attract.

Newfie are you a health care practitioner? RAD is something I'm interested in learning about. I read the wikipedia but it said there wasn't much known about the disorder.

Also never forget...everything you do counts. It won't get you any awards. It won't give you fame and it might cost you every penny, but doing what's right when most people seem to not care, is the best way to live one's life in my book. Your friend is to be commended for her work. To the people she advocates for she is doing a great service.

It's never too late for humanity. We have a lot of people in the same boat who are simply disorganized. This state of affairs can and will change. It is historically inevitable. Just a matter of time.